Page 16 of Vallaverse: Twist
“No,” I interrupt her this time. “Why are you asking me?”
Her mouth slides back into that easy smile. “Because I'm a sucker for old flames and reunions. And I think Lazarus would enjoy getting reacquainted with you.”
“He doesn't look like he enjoys anything anymore. What's wrong with him?”
Laz finally speaks. “Nothing's wrong with me.” He sighs heavily and tips his head back against his chair. “I'm fine.”
“Do you want to rekindle anything?” I ask him directly.
“Of course he does,” Ms. Miller answers for him. “He told me so.”
“I don't understand.”
“You will. Just think about it,” she says, then she turns to Laz and puts her hand on his forehead before standing up andkissing it. “I think I should get him to bed. He's had a very long day. We'll be in touch. Order anything you like, it's on us.”
Then she leaves, and Laz lets her pull him away without so much as a backwards glance.
There is definitely something wrong with him. I'm sure he's still using. He looks very much like he did back then when he would be lost to me for days on end. But there's something else. More than just the fog of whatever substance he's currently favoring.
Laz isn't a man to simply be led away by the hand. Even at his weakest point, he still stood tall and strong; he still had fire within him. The man who sat at this table was dull. Gray. There was no fire. The way he looked at me, stared at me, across the arena was nothing but fire. What happened between then and just now?
I have no intention of ordering anything, but I sit down in the chair he was sitting in. It's the closest I've been to touching him in so many years that I can't help myself. I sit for a few moments and breathe in the air that still carries his scent.
His muted scent.
His tainted scent.
I can pick his scent out from every other one in this room, including the overbearing scent of his Alpha. His crisp cardamom is as intoxicating as it ever was, but it's tainted with the sour notes of the aftermath of a spoiled heat. A heat when everything was perfection, until it wasn't. The moment it goes from bliss to bad, the scent changes, and that smell is tangled up with his natural scent in such a way that it almost seems, for lack of a better descriptor, stale. That's what it is. Laz smells like stale heat.
“Can I bring you a wine list, sir?” a server interrupts my sad epiphany.
“No,” I tell him, rising. “That won't be necessary. I'm not staying.”
I put my forgotten drink on the table and pull out a few bills to toss next to it.
I don't really see anything on the journey from the restaurant to my suite. I'm lost in an ocean of too many thoughts and worries to care about the passing cityscape. I never should have met with Laz and his Alpha. It was a mistake that I'll be paying for for a while. I never should have come back here. Shane would have won this fight without my physical presence. The only things that will come from this doomed excursion are endless sleepless nights and the new car my therapist is going to buy with the money I'm going to have to pay him to help me work through this disaster.
Chapter Eight
Laz
The door slams behind me when I let it go. Normally I don't like loud noises, and I definitely don't like the anxiety of a slammed door, but I'm so angry that my body is hot.
“Why did you do that?”
“Do what?” Kris asks, looking over her shoulder on her way to the small bar in the corner of the main room.
“You know what,” I spit.
“Oh, sweetheart. Calm down. You're just going to work yourself up into a state.”
I am already in a state, and climbing higher. I would wring her neck if I thought I could manage it. I can't. She'd never allow it to happen. Anytime I even hint at becoming physically aggressive, she barks out commands to sit down and be quiet like any Alpha would when their authority is being questioned. She might look like a delicate little flower, but I've seen how vicious she can be if provoked.
“Why, Kris? Why did you put me in that position?”
“What position would you have preferred? Under him? On all fours?” She smirks as she pours herself a drink. “Cowgirl?”
My mouth tightens into a thin line.
